IPE Foundational Learning Activities
Foundational Curricular Learning Activities
Why Collaborative Healthcare? Learning from stories and science
This introductory learning activity powerfully brings together the entire incoming cohort of health science students. Students will leave this session inspired to grow as collaborative and team-based healthcare providers, through the Interprofessional Education (IPE) Curriculum and other experiences. Students will leave this session with a new or reinforced appreciation for the experiential ways in which collaboration can enhance care.
Who are your collaborators? Valuing what we do and challenging what we think
Students gather in collaborative teams to collaboratively explore perspectives on the roles and scopes of practice of their own and other health and social care professions. Student teams will engage in small group discussions and activities to consider how to negotiate roles and navigate role overlap in practice. Through critical reflection on biases and stereotypes associated with roles, students will be encouraged to be curious about and value the knowledge that every team member brings to optimize care.
Cultivating Team Partnerships: Learning from Lived Experiences
Students will explore partnerships with patient/client/family/caregiver in a team context by learning from experiences of patient/client/family/caregiver partners and through engaging in a verbatim Reader’s Theatre script on partnership developed by University of Toronto students and faculty. Student groups will have the opportunity to work with a patient partner and facilitator to discuss and analyze concepts related to patient/client partnerships through discussion questions provided.
Faculty-Led Learning Activity
This time is protected for two or more programs to collaborate to create a relevant Exposure Level interprofessional learning activity for their students. The topic of this learning activity is developed by interested programs to enhance learning that is relevant to a smaller group of disciplines. The learning objectives and curriculum outline are set by the participating programs.
How Do We Collaborate for Quality Care? Supporting Clients and Families in Navigating Health & Social Care Systems
This activity is designed to immerse learners in collaborative leadership, interprofessional quality improvement, and safety practices through interactive, interprofessional small group learning using client and family case studies.
Why conflict matters in collaborative practice: Learning how to constructively work through team differences and disagreements
Conflict is an inevitable part of working in teams—but it can also be a powerful driver for learning and improvement. In this session, learners will explore how differences and disagreements show up in collaborative practice, examine the influence of power and hierarchy, and compare practical tools and approaches to better understand and navigate conflict in interprofessional teams.
Case-based Learning Activity: Pain Curriculum, Palliative Care and/or ARCTIC
The educational context for Palliative Care is a simulated “interprofessional team meeting” during which each learner represents their respective profession. By participating in and contributing in this interprofessional team meeting, students learn about palliative care and requirements of "patient/client/family meeting" involving a patient/client with advanced disease.
ARCTIC: Appreciating Roles and Collaboration to Improve Care: Head and Neck Cancer is a case-based learning activity developed by Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. As a large group, students view a head and neck oncology patient’s narrative and debrief about the experience. Students participate in small interprofessional teams discussions to define their role in head and neck oncology and develop a team care plan.
IPE Component in a Practice Setting
This learning activity is built into existing clinical placements at one or more practice sites, and focuses on the development of competence in interprofessional collaboration. Students are integrated into care settings where they interact and work with patients/clients and other interprofessional team members. The IPE Component in a Practice Setting can be delivered in a structured or flexible model to be completed over the course of the student’s educational program with our many practice partners:
IPE Structured Placement
Students are placed in an interprofessional team within a clinical care unit at a practice site. They participate in one or two facilitated introductory tutorials and then continue to meet as a group on a regular basis for patient/client/family-themed tutorials. Upon completion of their clinical experience, they deliver a group presentation.
IPE Flexible Placement
Students who are not able to participate in a structured IPE placement will need to work with their placement supervisor to complete the following 3 IPE Flexible Activities:
Flexible Activity 1 - Role Discovery: Shadowing and/or Interviewing Care/Service Partners
Through shadowing and/or interviewing, learners will have the opportunity to learn about, from, and with care/service partners from professions or roles different from their own. Learners will explore not only the formal responsibilities of different professions and roles, but also how roles are enacted, shared, adapted, and negotiated within a particular team and practice context.
The activity may be completed individually or by a small group of learners where appropriate. For example, two or three learners may interview or shadow an occupational therapist together and subsequently debrief their observations.
This activity may be completed at any point in a placement but is particularly appropriate for learners in early placements.
Flexible Activity 2 - Team Discovery: Analyzing Interprofessional Interactions
Through observing or participating in interprofessional interactions, learners will examine how care/service partners bring together different roles, knowledge, and perspectives to address a shared purpose.
Learners will analyze how participants communicate, coordinate responsibilities, contribute to decisions, navigate differences, and incorporate the goals and knowledge of persons and their care partners. They will also consider how relationships, power, organizational culture, and the practice environment shape the interaction.
This activity may be completed at any point but is most appropriate for learners in intermediate- or senior-level placements.
Flexible Activity 3 - Guided Partnership: Collaborating with Care/Service Partners
In this activity, learners actively collaborate with at least one care/service partner from another profession or role to address a shared practice goal. The activity may form part of the learner’s usual placement responsibilities or may be arranged with the preceptor/supervisor.
Learners will contribute their developing professional knowledge and skills, seek and respond to others’ perspectives, clarify roles and responsibilities, and participate in shared planning, decision-making, or action. Where applicable, the goals, knowledge, and preferences of persons and their care partners should help shape the collaborative work.
Following the activity, learners will seek feedback and reflect on how their own actions, team relationships, contextual conditions, and organizational processes enabled or constrained collaboration.
This activity may be completed at any point but is most appropriate for learners in senior-level placements who have sufficient professional knowledge and independence to make a meaningful, appropriately supervised contribution.
- Please see curriculum tools and resources for the downloadable pdf forms for the flexible activities.
- Flexible Activity Sheet - can be a helpful resource for Supervisors and Staff!